Page 1 of The Doctor's No-Strings Deal

CHAPTER 1

MEGAN

Megan Bright stepped out of the shower on the morning of her first day of residency and smelled breakfast cooking. That wasn’t a good thing, as much as she appreciated the kindness. Her mom, Sadie, wasn’t well enough to care for herself, let alone her adult daughter. In fact, their arrangement was meant to be the other way around. Megan was supposed to be looking after her mom, whose recent diagnoses of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome had given both of them some initial hope that her years-long symptoms might finally be addressed.

Then the system had let them down again because, apparently, ME/CFS was not adequately understood or researched. Sadie Bright’s symptoms were part of the reason Megan had gone into medicine to begin with. No doctors seemed to be able to help her mom, and Megan was determined to change that. Over the years, it became as much about changing things for other people with the disease as it was helping her mom.

And now she was finally fulfilling her dream for the both of them. She leaned over the sink and wiped the steam from themirror with her towel. Her mousy, wet hair clung to the skin of her cheeks and shoulders as she toweled off the rest of her body about as aggressively as she toweled off the mirror. There was no time to baby herself. She did take a moment to pop her head around the corner on the way to her room and reprimand her mom.

“I thought I told you not to exert yourself today,” she said with a grin on her face.

Her mom shot back playfully. “You’re not the boss of me, kid. I’m making you breakfast whether you like it or not. Now make yourself cute, so I can have the faintest hope for grandbabies one day.”

Megan laughed and shook her head. “You know I can’t work miracles, Mom.”

“It won’t take a miracle,” her mom retorted from the kitchen, “just a much shorter skirt.”

“Mo-ther!” Megan’s mock outrage didn’t fool her mom at all. The two of them spent most mornings ribbing each other, doing their best to make the other one laugh. Laughter had gotten them through their hardest days, and they clung to it as a cure for all kinds of stress.

Megan dressed in a hurry, put her hair into a messy bun, and then frowned at herself in the mirror. “Okay fine,” she muttered. “You win.” And she discarded the skirt she had chosen for a significantly shorter one. She’d always been a tall girl — a trait she inherited from her now-absent father — so finding a skirt that fit her higher on the thighs was not a challenge. Whatever made her mother happy made Megan happy, and she would be required to change into scrubs when she got to the hospitalanyway. She took one last look in the mirror, decided to clean up her bun a bit, and added a bit of blush and lipstick just to look a little more put together.

“Breakfast!” her mom called from the kitchen.

When Megan sat down across from her mom at their tiny dinner table, she felt like she was staring down at a commercial for orange juice. Fruit, toast, sausage, and the fluffiest scrambled eggs she’d ever seen in her life sat in front of her.

“Mom, you shouldn’t have,” she said, and she meant it. “Promise me you won’t be doing the dishes at least? I can take care of it when I get home.”

“I won’t doallthe dishes,” her mom said with a smirk. “But I might do some just to be a rebel.”

Megan took a bit of scrambled egg and would have sworn they tasted exactly the way sunshine felt if that wouldn’t have made her look a little tooPollyanna. “Just try not to burn yourself out. Remember to rest.”

“It’s a good day, Meg,” her mom said with a smile. “I can’t help it. My baby’s going out and making me so proud. I want to spoil her a little.” She leaned across the table and made sad-puppy eyes at her daughter. “Please, please, please.”

Megan wrinkled her nose and pretended to deliberate. “How can I ever say no to you?” She wasn’t joking this time. Megan had lived with her mother her whole life. They told each other everything, got each other through everything. Maybe her reason for living with her mother as an adult was to help out when Sadie got her flair-ups, but Megan wouldn’t have had it any other way. Who else got to be so close to their mother, evenafter graduating college and becoming independent? No one. To Megan, her life was a gift, and everything in it was perfect.

Well, maybe not perfectly perfect. The two women lived in a small apartment with a tiny kitchen and a balcony you couldn’t even fit a chair on. But they had worked hard for that little home, and it represented a kind of hope. Sadie had even painted the walls bright, warm colors, saying they’d paint them white again when they moved out. The expense was worth the happiness.

That’s how Meg was raised to see the world. Happiness was the point. Work hard because it makes you happy. Succeed because it makes your family happy. Everything was always possible with the right attitude.

“Promise you’ll give me the play-by-play as soon as you get home,” Sadie was saying. “I want to hear everything. You’re going to meet so many new people. Surely one of them will be worth dating.”

Megan squinted across the table at her mother as she chewed a bite of toast. “Your mind is more one-track than anyone’s I’ve ever met. Anyway, we’re not there to make friends. We’re there to learn.”

“Nobody learns anything without making a few friends first.” Her mother grinned back at her. “And if one of them happens to be cute…” She shrugged.

“If he’s cute, he’s not going to notice me.” Megan piled the rest of her eggs onto her toast and started eating it like an open-faced sandwich. “And that’s fine by me. I’m going to be way too busy. This is too important to let dating drama get in the way. I swear I’ll work on the grandbabies, Mom,” she added quickly, getting ahead of her mother’s protest. “It’s just going to be alittle bit longer. Then you’ll have grandbabies and a doctor for a daughter.”

“Go get it, girl,” her mom said. “You really can have everything. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“I won’t, Mom.” Megan inhaled the rest of her breakfast, then ran back to her room to pack her bag full of everything she thought she might need throughout the day. She had electronic notepads, books, pencils, hair clips, tissues, and what seemed like everything else that wasn’t her kitchen sink. She chided herself for packing a week’s worth of belongings just for one day. But every time she thought about maybe leaving something out, she imagined a dozen alarmingly specific scenarios that meant she would need that precise item.

Her bag was too heavy to bike with, but she only needed to get it as far as the nearest bus stop, then it was just a short ride at the other end. If Philadelphia had one thing going for it, it was stellar public transportation. But of course, in Megan’s opinion, Philadelphia had just about everything going for it. She loved the city despite its flaws. She’d always called it home and was more than pleased that she’d been able to secure a residency close to home.

On her way out the door, she stopped to kiss her mom on the forehead. “Glasses,” Sadie reminded her.

“Oh, shoot!” She ran back to her room to grab her glasses.Of all things to forget, she thought. “I should just get contacts already,” she said when she reappeared in the kitchen.

“Don’t be silly,” her mom said. “How can I expect you to marry a doctor if you don’t look like a sexy librarian at work?”

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